Let's Talk About Levels or Tiers of Success

[Reynard]

[Note: This is another thread in my ongoing "series" exploring different ideas in RPG design as I formulate my own game. The point is not to talk about what my game should or should not look like, but to examine the subject broadly so I can consider lot of different perspectives as I think about what I might do. Thanks for participating.]

I have settled on a core mechanic for my game design, and it results in either 0, 1 or 2 successes on any given roll, with the potential for "critical success" as well. I don't think I feel the need for a "critical failure" result beyond getting no successes.

Anyway, what I would like to talk about in this thread is levels or tiers of success in RPGs: what games you like or don't like that use multiple levels of success; the kind of implementation that you think works, or doesn't, and produces fun, or not, results; how multiple levels or tiers of success interact with different modes of play, such as exploration versus combat; that sort of thing.

For my part, I chose 0-2+ as a basis because I like the way it works in Savage Worlds (SWADE, Daggerheart and Shadowdark are my design pillar examples). In older editions of that game, you could rack up a bunch of extra successes on a very explodey roll, but SWADE has brought it down to just one "extra success" to clean it up and I think it works. The system considers the "extra success" special and many powers, weapons or maneuvers do more when an extra success is achieved (rather than just doing the same thing but bigger numbers). I like the idea of their being choices of what to do with that extra success, too.

SO let's talk about it.

 

[Breaking Star Games]

It's easy to point to Powered by the Apocalypse traditional 3 levels of what I would call narrative authority on a roll:

Miss (6-): The GM makes a move as hard as they want. This is usually a failure and complicating the situation, a downbeat in the narrative - "No, And". But it's entirely in the prerogative of the GM to use a GM Move like Offer an Opportunity Without a Cost "No, But" or to give them what they want but in the worst possible way "Yes, But"

Interestingly some newer designs provide more guidance within a Basic Move on what kind/category of GM Moves you may be looking on at a Miss over the traditional style of leaving it entirely open of Apocalypse World's "Expect the worst." Typically more specific Moves like Playbook Moves define the miss as they have much more specific triggers and contexts they are used in.

Weak Hit (7-9): Defined by the Basic Move, I have seen it come in being a plain "Yes" like in AW's Read a Sitch/Person where there is no cost. But more typical is the "Yes, But" of Success but with some cost or complication. Sometimes it means more limited Success (Blades in the Dark has it's Reduced Effect Consequence).

This being more weighted to be the common cost means that the players' decisions are what causes their future obstacles as the players feel more in control but there is still rising tension of new problems or tradeoffs. So rather than fixed adventures, you have a much more Play to Find Out style with lower prep. It also points to the core drama of asking the PC, "How much are you willing to pay to get what you want?"

Strong Hit (10+): Also defined by the Basic Move coming in two typical varieties of "Yes" with plain success without Weak Hit's consequences or "Yes, And" where you get to pick more options (like Read a Sitch gives you 3 Questions). Though if we look at AW's Seize by Force Basic Move, it's really "Yes, But, And" since you always trade Harm and will always have that Cost.

I think using very different names from Failure, Mixed Success and Success is actually useful (not common for Forge/PbtA Jargon) to get the GM out of the head of keeping things success/failure and into the head of who gets more say in a situation.

And there is also sometimes the Critical Hit (12+) to add a fourth level of getting even more. Often unlocking them for specific Basic Moves to show some mastery/specialization and niche protection.

Why it's fun: I think what made me most interested in running and designing in the space is I have all the tools I need to make sure when someone picks up the dice, it's dramatic - the world will react to the PCs' actions. There is never a "nothing happens." Nor do I need to do a lot of improvisation (an issue I have with Forged in the Dark requiring a lot of improvising Complications) to make sure of that because either the Basic Moves or the GM Moves point me somewhere interesting (when it's well designed!) When the design doesn't support providing good Moves or how to prep, then the GM does shoulder a lot of burden, a problem I have with many narrative RPGs.

 

[payn]

I dont mind tiers of success in an exploration/social pillar, but for some reason ive found the combat pillar mostly inconsistent. I really like success with a complication, and failure with a small benefit. Its just more nuanced than traditional binary do or do not. I like the narrative approach and room it gives to players and GMs.

So, in Traveller you roll 2D6 add your stat and skill mod. The target is 8. The effect is numbers above or below 8. So, for example, your result is a 10 its a success with an effect of 2. A 6, however, is a fail with the effect of -2. As a referee, ill play within the effect for added bonuses to the narrative of the action. A pretty simple guide that doesnt need multiple dice and/or ones with symobols as gensys from FFG did. While I think the degree system of gensys is great, its perceived difficulty of adoption didnt do it any favors.

PF2 is the one I that doesnt feel right to me. Spells typically go from do nothing, to add small rider, to do what its supposed to, to critically do what its supposed to. On one hand its cool that spells are less binary pass/fail, but I also dont think spell casting had to be any more complicated that it is. The real bummer to me is the <10> critical system. Challenging fights above the PCs level cant be critcal hit by the PCs, even though the enemy can crit the PCs. While that feels terrifying and everyone needs to work as a team, it also feels bad that by virtue of mechanics you cant crit a boss. In this sense, the tiers of success seems to have complicated combat and not really added anything to the exploration and social aspects of PF, IME.

In summary, I like tiers of success mechanics that are quick and easy to adjudicate. I dont like them when they make combat more complicated and/or feel exclusive to PCs or NPCs.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

For combat, tiers of success often can easily translate to damage or some effects. Cool, that's fine.

For all other aspects of roleplaying, tiers of results are not often well used or defined

What is never ever helpful is =
1 success (tier 1): good result
2 success(tier 2): great result
3 success(tier 3): critical result

This is always no-fun to see in a game.

Because now I have to as the GM think of three possible gradients of what the results are - and nothing here helps me do that. What is good to GM X may be great to GM Y which may be middling to a Player C. It's all GM fiat, arbitrary and not useful.

Another example of kind unhelpful results are games that use dice pools but dont really do anything with them outside of combat. Some games have 1 - 5 difficulty, but the players routinely roll 7 to 14 successes... of which mean nothing outside of combat-what a waste.
Or they have 1 - 5 difficulty, but again, player A rolls 3 successes and player B rolls 4 successes and Neither results mean anything different, it was an arbitrary gate by the GM.
That's often so obscure its not fun to engage with because its just GM fiat with extra steps.

I prefer if tiers of success are explicit - like Actual results.
This means the results are bespoke to what you are doing, and just as detailed as combat.
We get things like =

Persuade results
Fail: they refuse your offer until you prove yourself to them or they do it but in a way that causes you trouble later
Success with complications: "they will do it but only if you pay extra cost, favor, or let them benefit too"
Success: they do it as you hoped for as best fits the fiction

Use Device results
Fail: it does not work until you get a part/item to fix it, or it works but its going haywire in a bad way
Success with complications: its working and does the task for you, but then breaks or has some odd side effect
Success: it works as best fits the fiction, does what you expected

Search Around
Fail: as you are looking around you draw trouble prepare for a fight/problem,
Success with complications: you find what you are looking for but its missing some of its info or you need to follow up to get its relevancy, or you find what you are looking for but its in the hands of enemy or a problem/obstacle
Success: you find what you were looking for

These are useful, they have just enough info to very quickly help the GM adjudicate the roll, AND they give explicit example of what the player is owed. So GM can't weasel out of the results with old school fiat because the player got a lucky roll.
AND these are vague enough that they can fit into any situation so they are always applicable.

 

[payn]

Persuade results
Fail: they refuse your offer until you prove yourself to them or they do it but in a way that causes you trouble later
Success with complications: "they will do it but only if you pay extra cost, favor, or let them benefit too"
Success: they do it as you hoped for as best fits the fiction

These are useful, they have just enough info to very quickly help the GM adjudicate the roll, AND they give explicit example of what the player is owed. So GM can't weasel out of the results with old school fiat because the player got a lucky roll.
AND these are vague enough that they can fit into any situation so they are always applicable.

The downside is that you get back to that "I roll diplomacy!" style of play. It basically doesn't matter what the context is becasue its going to boil down to 3 possible results that have been explicitly written. This is a big part of why PF2 was such a bummer for me.

My approach is more conversational and players share in the stakes. I have an example from one of my Traveller games. One of the PCs is a computer whiz but doesnt have much in the way of combat skills. The PCs find themselves in the warehouse section of a space station and in a fire fight. The PC whiz asks if he can find a terminal and hack it for some type of advantage. I aks the player what they have in mind. They ask some more details about the warehouse. We come up with the idea that the warhouse section would have some chemical fire extinguisher systems and the PC wants to hack the system to make them go off on the enemies. I suggest that if the chemical goes off on the enemies, that round they can move and if they choose to attack its at a bane (Traveller disadvantage). On a success with an effect over 2, the system goes off on the enemies, and all they can do that round is move. Alternatively, a miss of -2 sets off a chemical spray in an unoccupied section of the warehouse. No harm but the enemies may be hip to the tactic now. Though, if you miss by more than -2 its gonna hit your teammates and their standard actions will be banes for the round. We agree, dice get rolled, we move on.

Now, I get that not all GMs and players want to have an active discussion about terms on every challenge like this; they'd likely prefer the explicit results table. Though, for me that just lacks the nuance and fun that the above situation bore out. I find I tend to have more active attention from players and encourage more creativity as well. YMMV.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

What is never ever helpful is =
1 success (tier 1): good result
2 success(tier 2): great result
3 success(tier 3): critical result

This is always no-fun to see in a game.

Hmm. Very odd. For me this is table stakes in a fun game. I hear your argument that it requires the GM to be creative, but in my experience, all systems that do this have some examples or defaults to help.

What is good to GM X may be great to GM Y which may be middling to a Player C. It's all GM fiat, arbitrary and not useful.

And ... what would be the problem with different tables having different interpretations? Assuming that you are synching with your players (if you are simply dictating without allowing player input, then yeah, you will have problems).

It's not GM fiat, because you engage the players. It's table variance, which is only an issue for competitive games, which are rare. It's not arbitrary, as any system I've ever seen provides guidance and examples.

 

[Deset Gled]

I have settled on a core mechanic for my game design, and it results in either 0, 1 or 2 successes on any given roll, with the potential for "critical success" as well. I don't think I feel the need for a "critical failure" result beyond getting no successes.

What is never ever helpful is =
1 success (tier 1): good result
2 success(tier 2): great result
3 success(tier 3): critical result

I am with @RenleyRenfield on this one. But I think most arguments that I would be making here are about the pros/cons of "fail forward", not about "tiers of success".

Pretty much every "fail forward" game design that I have ever seen necessitates that you must use some degree of "tiers of success". Because when there's no true fail state, degrees of success and/or level of complications is the only way to separate randomized results. OTOH, without "fail forward", you can have a much wider range in your tiers of success. That is, you can also have critical failure, lesser degrees of failure, and zeros, in addition to complications and degrees of success.

So @Reynard, I'll stop before I go too much further and just ask: Do you want this thread to be (+ Fail Forward) to focus on just Tiers, does it make more sense to have a separate thread on Fail Forward, or did you intend for this discussion to cover both?

 

[Kannik]

I love games that use a Margin of Success/Failure (MoS and MoF) metric. I've been hooked on that concept ever since I saw it in DP9's Silhouette system. Done well, it hooks in equally well to both mechanical and narrative results. It helps shape the action and provides the GM with directions to go or riff off of. When I recently wrote my own system, one of the fundamental requirements for me was to include an MoS/MoF mechanic.

What I think makes for a good MoS system is one that:

• Works off dice providing a bell curve distribution (so that it's less likely to get a fabulous result compared to a marginal one)
• Works off a dice system that doesn't require lots of math to figure out the MoS (so no having to add up a bunch of numbers, then compare it to a target number, then compare if you are X over that target number, and for each X over that target number you get another MoS...)
• Equally ties into elements mathematically tracked (for example, MoS directly applies to damage, without a separate "damage roll")

Beyond those, MoS also can:

• Have a system for 'purchasing' various benefits/outcomes (for example, spend 2 MoS to knock your opponent prone). MoS can also feed into a central pool (like Momentum from 2d20 games) if it makes sense for the campaign's genre
• Be used in ways to track long projects, and used to determine the outcome of things such as chases, contests, investigations, or other challenges
• Be leveraged in the other way to allow players to invoke penalties against themselves to increase their success on the current test

At the table, it provides GMs and the players with lots of flexibility and guidance on the outcomes themselves and how they influence both the situation and the world (including characters) around them.

 

[Kannik]

For all other aspects of roleplaying, tiers of results are not often well used or defined

What is never ever helpful is =
1 success (tier 1): good result
2 success(tier 2): great result
3 success(tier 3): critical result

This is always no-fun to see in a game.

I disagree that this is not helpful and is no-fun -- that flexibility for the GM and players to me is a feature, not a bug.

However, I will say that how many levels of success can become an issue (or if no cap is placed on it). 2, 3, or 4 levels in my experience have worked fine, as there's still enough distinction between them to give the GM/players guidance (for 4, I would recommend the base level be considered a Marginal success). Beyond that and it's trying to parse out and split hairs the difference between an extraordinary success and a fantabulous success.

 

[soviet]

I disagree that this is not helpful and is no-fun -- that flexibility for the GM and players to me is a feature, not a bug.

How is it flexible for players - do they get to interpret the levels of success for the roll themselves?

No, I'm Renley on this. Multiple amorphous levels of success means the GM has too much ability to downgrade successful rolls into 'nearly, but not quite'.