Binary Success vs Multiple Levels of Success

[aramis erak]

I think you may have missed the fact that it's not required that you narrate each special success. You can always pick a canned option like "more damage". My players are about 50-50 in whether they'll narrate stuff or just cause more damage. It really isn't a burden.

I found TOR 1e much the same. Plus the traits in 1e allowing success without rolling if your trait made sense. It's amazing the creative ways pipe smoking came into play... signaling the Eagles that someone needed their attention... gifting some ol' Toby to one of Thorin's Company's survivors (multiple survivors, not at the same time), staying awake all night... signalling, "I'm not an Ork" by approaching from upwind.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

...
Simple failure is often, for me, the right choice for encouraging players to think outside the box, as well - or to getting them to move on to more important things.

Ok that's fair. And in a single attempt, I agree that its reasonable. But its still the worst or least interesting response to a roll. And it becomes very un-fun when you get multiples in a row - the bad nature of pass/fail become tedium and frustration. You have 4 players, and all 4 fail their roll, and all 4 result in nothing happening... ung... now everyone is just trying to get past this very no-fun situation of bad dice rolls. This happens often as is discussed many places. And even a single player can fail 3 , 4 times in a row... 3 or 4 times of nothing...

But getting rid of 'nothing happens' result, you entirely, 100% eliminate a known frustration in gaming. And you lose nothing from doing so. The characters still struggle, there are still stakes, tragedy still happens. Its just that 'nothing' never happens.

What you are taking for granted is not something that is universal. Why? Because action attempts already include a cost - the [action economy | character time] spent on the attempt.

Retrying the same roll over and over is action economy at its worst, and in general never a fun exercise...

And, in many games, even newer ones in the traditional/semi-simulationist ones, retries are not permitted. ...

I am glad you brought this up. And I think the hard and fast rule of 'no re-tries' is fine. Especially when t applies to the group ( Joe already tried to pick the lock, he failed the lock cant be picked, all of you need to find another way). If its truly a one-time roll = then I am ok with this. The consequence of a single roll eliminating a task option is cool.

Most all games allow for retires. Either by the same character (given more or less need to create new opportunity) or by every other player rolling to try.

Honestly, I can't stand it when a GM says "Roll Perception" to one player, and when they fail - every other player at the table chimes in "I will try too" ... ung... no. If I said "take 4 tries at the roll, I would have". Now we are just 'roll bashing' and that's very lame design and no fun play...

 

[RenleyRenfield]

Also, accomplishing your goal imperfectly and failing to accomplish your goal but something else happens are not the same thing, at all. Both contain some "fuzziness", but one has you do what you intended and the other does not.

Ok, so let's develop this idea out.

Are you ok with the initial premise of the following chart =

• Critical Success
• Success
• Success with Compilations
• Fail with opportunity
• Critical Fail

If we go with the above scale... one scenario to test is =

• Roll to climb the wall
• possible Stakes are: you fall and hurt yourself, you get caught by a guard, or you lose an item out of a pocket/strap as you climb

Roll results =
- You succeed with complications = what happens here? You always climb the wall but suffer one of the consequences. Ok, that seems fine, all Stakes can apply here.

- You failed with opportunity = what happens here? You never climb the wall but you get a chance to ... what exactly? The only goal here was to climb the wall, so what is a meaningful opportunity (that does not waste our time as a "nothing happens" result or just act as a re-try = no re-tries! because a re-try is just a success with complications eventually...)?

 

[aramis erak]

Ok that's fair. And in a single attempt, I agree that its reasonable. But its still the worst or least interesting response to a roll.

I find excessive consequences far more discouraging.
Both as player and GM.

As I said above, a simple failure and move on to other things is indeed the most interesting to me. My groups ask if they can retry rather than assuming, and specify how they're changing the conditions of the check as they do so. This works especially well in Cortex Plus (and by extention, Cortex Prime), Fate, most 2d20 games ... where you can create a temporary asset/aspect/trait to provide a bonus. Or in star wars/genesys, where the fail with opportunity creates a bonus blue die for someone else.

My read of AW is that it's not actually Success/Complicated Success/Fail, but Success/Complicated Success/fumble, with no room for the simple fail -
Simple fail: you can't retry, someone else with better odds may, either way, the time's spent, and it's time for someone else to get the spotlight.

 

[Staffan]

My read of AW is that it's not actually Success/Complicated Success/Fail, but Success/Complicated Success/fumble, with no room for the simple fail -
Simple fail: you can't retry, someone else with better odds may, either way, the time's spent, and it's time for someone else to get the spotlight.

PBTA isn't my cup of tea, but my understanding is that this is very much a deliberate design decision on their part. From a drama-creation perspective, "nothing happens" is boring. It might be realistic from a world-simulation perspective, but it's not "fun" (for certain values of fun), and it doesn't move the story forward. That's not to everyone's liking (for example, not mine), but I can see the point in making that design choice.

 

[Laurefindel]

PBTA isn't my cup of tea, but my understanding is that this is very much a deliberate design decision on their part. From a drama-creation perspective, "nothing happens" is boring. It might be realistic from a world-simulation perspective, but it's not "fun" (for certain values of fun), and it doesn't move the story forward. That's not to everyone's liking (for example, not mine), but I can see the point in making that design choice.

Thing is, the consequences of a failure is rarely “nothing happens” even in a pass/fail system à la D&D. Even when the result isn’t catastrophic, something usually still happens because many things usually happen at once.

For example, we rarely just make an Athletics check to climb or a thieves tools check to open a lock. Usually, we make an Athletics check to climb a wall in order to catchup to the bad guy without hurting ourself or lose anything on the way. We make a thieves tools check to open a lock without being detected, taking too long, and not lose/break our tools while doing so. A failed check can mean any of those things, it doesn’t mean failing at all of them at once.

 

[Staffan]

Thing is, the concequence of a failure is rarely “nothing happens”. Even when the result isn’t catastrophic, something usually still happens because many things usually happen at once.

For example, we rarely just make an Athletics check to climb or a thieves tools check to open a lock. Usually, we make an Athletics check to climb a wall in order to catchup to the bad guy without hurting ourself or lose anything on the way. We make a thieves tools check to open a lock without being detected, taking too long, and not lose/break our tools while doing so. A failed check ca mean any of those things, it doesn’t mean failing at all of them at once.

Right. "You take too long, so now the guard is coming around the corner" is an interesting consequence of failing a Lockpicking check. But, at least back in 3e (and today in Pathfinder 2), some tasks are set to have a high DC but allow retries, as a means of seeing how long something takes. Lockpicking and trapfinding in particular relied on people using the Take 20 rules, and the DCs were set accordingly. That's the kind of stuff I believe PBTA doesn't like.

 

[Distracted DM]

I use both pass/fail and degrees of success. At the table it works well, but originally players expected everything to be degrees of success, especially when they can roll very high over the DC.

I think one example is the classic Persuasion mind control- "the DC was 15 to get the knight to help out, I got a 30, so he should also give me his magic sword!" No, that's his family heirloom, he wouldn't give that up.

So both can be used! But the table has to understand that the GM is the adjudicator of what is/isn't a Degrees of Success situation.. it's up to the GM ofc if they're open to player suggestions in each case. I allow it cuz player creativity is great, but it does open the door for them to try to get every little advantage

 

[Laurefindel]

So both can be used! But the table has to understand that the GM is the adjudicator of what is/isn't a Degrees of Success situation.. it's up to the GM ofc if they're open to player suggestions in each case. I allow it cuz player creativity is great, but it does open the door for them to try to get every little advantage

Indeed,

And regardless of the system, whether it’s a binary roll like D&D, degrees of success like TOR, success with consequences like PbtA, or triple-axis icons like FFG Genesis/Star Wars, the table must understand that some things cannot be achieved with a single roll after 2 minutes of roleplay.

Asking the king to commit suicide or the knight to give you their magic sword is not going to happen, period. At best you may initiate the process of an existential crisis or convince the knight that your own weapon suck, but influencing the mind of a prominent NPC like Wormtongue poisoned the mind of King Theoren should be the result of multi-year effort and with near-magical skill level.

 

[zakael19]

Right. "You take too long, so now the guard is coming around the corner" is an interesting consequence of failing a Lockpicking check. But, at least back in 3e (and today in Pathfinder 2), some tasks are set to have a high DC but allow retries, as a means of seeing how long something takes. Lockpicking and trapfinding in particular relied on people using the Take 20 rules, and the DCs were set accordingly. That's the kind of stuff I believe PBTA doesn't like.

PBTA was created, in part, to ensure that the players and facilitator were always saying "cool stuff." That's why moves mostly have fictional triggers that you need to say your character does, that's why the GM is constricted to a set of Moves that they deploy as the rules prompt - that always evolve the fiction forward. Can you do the same things on a failed skill check in a binary system? Of course! Is the design itself grounded in such, in a way that makes clear that on a fail you should expect the GM to provoke tension in some way? Probably not!

Like, most of the AW moves have "on a 6-, prepare for the worst" baked right into the reference. You know what you're getting. But, conversely to @aramis erak 's point, it's never a "fumble" - it's that something happens which either doesn't give you the outcome you were desiring; or gives you the outcome you thought you were desiring (but turns out you really didn't actually); or something similar. In fact, one of the core constraints of PBTAs tends to be "dont make the characters look bad," which is what a fumble in most pass/fail systems tends to play out as.