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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7718098" data-attributes="member: 42582">[MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION], there's a lot in your post, this is just picking up on the bits where I thought I had something to contribute.I know of Fiasco but don't know it.Of the systems I do know (again, nothing very radical) I like BW the best in this respect: advancing your PC requires confronting challenges that you will almost certainly lose (unless you deploy a lot of metagame resources and get lucky). So loss on the part of the protagonists is a recurring, sometimes near-constant, feature of the game.I agree that D&D has a very hard time with this, as (i) there is no reason not to try and win, and (ii) the penalty for loss is often PC death.My fantasy Cortex/MHRP isn't comedic, but it's is more light-hearted than typical D&D. I think in part because the system encourages the player to take the situation and run with it - there is no sober planning or worrying about consequences.I find it rather liberating in this respect!Interesting point.Because I've never done much system=story RPGing (even as simple a one as classic alignment) in a way that lets the player blame the author, I feel that I haven't seen a lot of what you describe. My players have tended to have to take responsibility for their PCs. But I'm aware that the phenomenon exists.Vincent Baker wrote about this a while ago, contrasting IIEE with teeth with IIEE that relies upon the participants to do the work of linking resolution to fiction (he contrasted his designs of DitV with In a Wicked Age).Oddly enough, I think that 4e skill challenges have more "teeth" (in Baker's sense) than BW Duel of Wits, which can become just a dice game if the players don't inject their fiction into it. (Whereas a move in a skill challenge can't be adjudicated, at least if the canonical procedure is being followed, until located in the fiction.)Of course, classic D&D combat can suffer from this problem badly: dice are rolled, hits taken, but who knows what is going on in the fiction! - it's all just numbers.I feel that the issue of surprise can be divorced from the issue of teeth for IIEE - but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to articulate it clearly. It's more a gut feel, based on play experiences with 4e skills and BW.But - as per my earlier post - it shifts a big load onto the GM to be able to narrate consequences. The system won't, in itself, carry that load, though it can help (I'm thinking of the DW list of "GM moves", and a less canonical equivalent in the BW Adventure Burner advising the GM about options for narrating failure).</blockquote>

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